Interview with Author Liza O'Connor

My guest today is Liza O'Connor. Hello, Liza! Welcome to Writing in the Modern Age!
It’s such a pleasure to have you here today. Can you tell us a little bit about your book? When did it come out? Where can
we get it?

I
would love to tell you about my latest book. Coming to Reason is book three of an
ongoing series called A Long Road To Love. It came out February 3, 2014. It
is available on Amazon.

The
series begins with the Worst Week Ever. It's the funniest
book I've ever written. So you should probably start there.

In
it my heroine, Carrie, has the worst week imaginable.

She’s
almost killed four times, arrested three times, got fired twice and accidentally
distributed narcotic turtles once. And the worst thing that happens is
that she falls in love with the most god awful male lead in the world. He’s a
self-centered billionaire who has tantrums like a three year old. However, he
turns nice to her, and God help her, she falls in love with him.

In
book two, Oh Stupid Heart, despite many reasons to dump him,
Carrie keeps working on improving Trent until by the end, most readers will
fall in love with him.

Bad
move, because in this book, Coming to Reason, it all blows
up and finally Carrie will let me hook her up with a better guy. He’s been
there since book one, but she has only had eyes for Trent. Even in book three,
it takes her awhile to realize he isn’t just a super nice guy who buys her
snacks. No, he’s a keeper.

The
series was supposed to end there, but my readers won’t have it. Why did Trent
blow up? What’s happened to him since Sam yanked him out of the limo?

The
answers to those questions surprised even me as I wrote the fourth book Climbing
out of Hell. And I’ve no doubt my readers will want a conclusion
to Sam’s story after that.

Be
warned: this series may take a while to end. But it’s so fun, who cares?

Is there anything that
prompted your book? Something that inspired you?

Oh,
yeah. When I began this story, it was only supposed to be a single book. But I
had a problem. The ingredients I made Trent with did not make a good hero. But
no matter how many other guys I threw at Carrie, she only had eyes for Trent.
So I kept writing and writing trying to bring her to reason.

Book two comes into existence, and I toss more guys her way. But no. She’s not giving
up on Trent. There’s a decent man inside him and she’s going to bring it out.

In
book three, I had to end this foolishness. Trent is a horrible guy and he will
never be good enough for her. So I blow him up. I have him behave so bad that
even Mother Teresa would have slapped him silly.

BACKGROUND
CHECK

I’ll
admit. What happens to Carrie is a combo of the two major relationships I’ve
had, both of which ended in explosive Coming to Reason moments where I went
from thinking I loved the guy to realizing he never loved me and now that I saw
him with my eyes wide open, I wanted nothing to do with him.

In
both cases, once the guy was gone from my life, I became incredibly happy. So
it only seemed fair to let Carrie have a quick recovery, as well, given Trent
is a composite of my romance disasters.

Still,
the great guy who has been there since book one is a bit worried. He’s had
terrible luck with rebound women, so even though he loves Carrie, in his mind
she’s on the rebound.

But
Carrie is not capable of being a rebounder. She will commit her heart
completely to whomever she dates. Let’s hope the great guy realizes that before
it’s too late, because another guy has wasted no time coming to make her his.

Do you have any favorite authors?

I
do. Some are famous and dead like Jane Austen and Douglas Adams. So let me tell
you about those that are very much alive, and yet to be fully discovered,
although they all have good followings.

In
no particular order, because I love them all:

Ella
Quinn. Her debut Historical
Regency series with spunky heroines is fabulous. So far, 3 books are out, and I
love them all.

Annie
Nicholas – Her Angler series
is quirky, funny, smart ass and by far the best vampire series I’ve ever read.
Buffy the Vamprye would love this series.

Rebecca
Royce is my queen of
supernatural and paranormal. She has a couple of wolf shifter series that are
fabulous. And I personally think her YA series about a future world where
humans fight for survival against vampires, were-wolves and even other humans
is one of the best YA series ever written. Well,
I best be quiet now and let my book do some talking. Thanks
for inviting me, Marie.

It's my pleasure!

Readers, here is the blurb for Coming to Reason.

Carrie has committed to
an inter-species marriage with Trent, her billionaire boss. Only, she requested
a long engagement to improve his stats. Presently, he is eighty percent
dreamboat and twenty percent nightmare.

When he fires her so they can be a ‘normal couple’, everything heads south.
Providing her a stark contrast, her new boss is everything a woman could want
in a man.

But for Carrie, her heart is taken and thus, her path to reason remains long
and arduous.

Here is an excerpt.

His hand grazed her
cheek with tenderness. “Carrie, don’t make me out to be the bad guy. I’m trying
to be a man you can love.”

She pressed herself
against his hard chest. “I already love you.”

“All right, then I
need to be the man I can love. He eased her back and stood up.
“Password for your computer?”

“You’re taking my
computer?”

“It’s company
property, and I’m pretty sure the new EA will need the information on it.”

She nodded. If the
girl had any hope of surviving the week, she would. “My password is one, L,
zero, V, E, T, R, E, N, T.”

He typed it in his
blackberry and smiled. “I Love Trent. Cute.”

Cute? Had he grown up
so fast he now saw her as a kid in comparison. “I’ll go get my laptop for you.”

“Not necessary. Sam
had instructions to find and retrieve it.”

And yet another blow.
He had his driver sneak into her house and steal her computer? “Trent, do you
no longer trust me? Are we breaking up?”

He knelt down in front
of her. “No! Although I feared you might strike out in anger. I know how much
you love my company—probably as much as my prior girlfriends have loved my
money. My experience has taught me to expect a she-devil drawing blood when a
woman is parted from what she loves most.” His sad eyes met hers. “I’m
hoping I’m what you love most—not my company.”

She cupped his face,
now understanding what motivated his horrible behavior. Trent still feared she
didn’t love him.

“You are.”

As if a heavy cloud
had dissipated, he smiled and lifted her into his arms. “God, I love you. And don’t
worry about money. I’ll take care of you, pay all your bills.”

“I’d rather receive a
two month severance package and pay them myself. It’s standard business
procedure.”

He covered her face
with kisses. “You’ve got it, but I’ve one favor to ask in return.”

She scowled. Her
severance should not depend upon favors. “What?”

“Don’t take a job with
Ian.”

His request calmed her
fears. She’d worried, despite his assurances to the contrary, he wanted to
break up with her. His determination to keep her from Ian said otherwise. Ian
Goodman, Trent’s ‘frenemy’, had taught her to be a world-class Change
Specialist. He’d also spent the whole two weeks trying to seduce her, which
she’d shared once she’d returned to the East Coast.

“Why would I take a
job on the West Coast? I would hate the commute,” she teased.

Author Bio

Liza lives in Denville,
NJ with her dog Jess. They hike in fabulous woods every day, rain or shine,
sleet or snow. Having an adventurous nature, she learned to fly small Cessnas
in NJ, hang-glide in New Zealand, kayak in Pennsylvania, ski in New York, scuba
dive with great white sharks in Australia, dig up dinosaur bones in Montana,
sky dive in Indiana, and raft a class four river in Tasmania. She’s an avid
gardener, amateur photographer, and dabbler in watercolors and graphic arts.
Yet through her entire life, her first love has and always will be writing
novels. She loves to create interesting characters, set them loose, and scribe
what happens.

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